Tara Clerkin Trio

★★★★ In Spring WORLD OF ECHO. DL/LP

Short album of big and small ideas from experimental Bristol trio.

Following almost a decade in Bristol’s live DIY experimental scene playing in various punk, space-rock and psych-folk outfits, multiinstrumentalists Tara Clerkin, and brothers Sunny-Joe Paradisos and Patrick Benjamin have now formed this small and hopefully more permanent outfit. With Clerkin providing floaty clarinet and woozy vocals, and Benjamin and Paradisos adding keyboards, drums and cello, this follow-up to their eponymous 2019 debut is a surreal brand of organic ambient pop-jazz with a loose hold on the anchors of reality. A tauntingly short record with a very long tail, it calls to mind the melancholy English eccentricities of Robert Wyatt and Plone, the skewed ’90s dream-pop of Laika and Moonshake, but also the blurred shadows of West Country pastoral spiritualists, Movietone. As diaphanous and comforting as a friendly ghost.